5 Mayıs 2011 Perşembe

Years 1914 to 1921 form an important period today in world history as far as war and political history are concerned. Photos of this period as well as declarations by several politicians and statesman are scrutinized while also statements and clothings of civilians and military forces are investigated. These historical materials are then shelved all together because they are enough to satisfy our visual as well as intellectual memory.
However you can not do the same for the Asia Minor history for the same period although there are many documents / photographs in relation to the history of this region. This is a direct result of inconsistencies between the archival documents of the British & French or US & Russians and the very few Armenian archives that you can hardly find do not match any archives at all. When it comes to the Ottoman archives, you face another challenge here since these archives have cuts starting from 1918 because of the British hegemony. I emphasize the cuts to the archives because it is the British Goverment that got the propaganda offices write Blue Book and it is the same British goverment that got 145 people from the leader staff of Committee of Union & Progress arrested in 1919 based on ‘punishment of war crimes’ legalized by the Treaty of Sevres. However these people had to be released in 1921 because of ‘lack of evidence’.

The Letter send by Craigie,The British Ambassador Washington to Lord Curzon: July 13th,1921
'' I'm sorry to say that nothing to be used against the Turks prosecuted in Malta as proof could be found ''
Foreign Office Archives F.O. 371/6504/E. 8519

The Letter send by The British Attorney Generalship in Malta to British Foreign Office: July 29th,1921
'' No proof against Turks prosecuted has been found ''
Foreign Office Archives F.O. 371/6504/E. 8745

All this nonsense point out the ‘Armenian Genocide’ claim as an index of ‘political rubbish’ that noone cares about as far as ‘historical’ and ‘legal’ facts are concerned. The reason why I am writing this article is not to point out this irony where there is complete dissimilarity with the ‘European Enlightenment’ though.
No. The point that I focus on here is the ‘Kurdish Nationalism’ template that the ‘genocide propaganda’ is trying to create as a political act and an expression and the ‘Kurdish people that had been deceived in 1915’.
The target of this template is not obviously the West public opinion or Turkish public opinion. The target is personally the Kurdish public opinion in Turkey. That is why this template starts to look quite tragicomical to anyone who starts to dig into the matter.

It is a wonder how the vision of ‘Barbarian Kurds’ formed during the trial period of Musa Bey especially observed by foreign embassadors carrying this into the West media turned into ‘Deceived Kurds’ after 120 years when there are several documents proving otherwise. Moreover the charges against Kurdish Musa Bey in relation to the raping of the daughter (Gülizar) of an Armenian priest from Muş were dropped but he was exiled nonetheless.
The number of accusations by Armenians about the ‘Kurdish Barbarism’ increased incrementally in the following years. During these years the French and the British media were highly covering propaganda about the ‘Innocent & Defenseless Armenians rebelling against Kurds & Turks’ whereas the US media which was still under politically an objective goverment was covering stories having just the opposite information about the incidents of East.

The most meaningful cover among all these was the one related to the ‘Armenian Rebel’ in Diyarbakır in 1895 that was published in NY Times. The headline of the cover was ‘The Armenian Reports Presented to Washington are Unfounded’. The embassy authorities investigation to the matter pointed out the fact that the claims about ‘atrocities against Armenians’ in Diyarbakır were groundless and some revolationary Armenians together with some collaborator Kurds were provoked and abused in the process.

Have you ever seen any articles like this one being published in today’s European – American media or in any scientific investigations?

It was reported by German Embassador Wangenheim that thousands of Kurds were massacred by Armenians around the city center of Van during WW1 right before the city was invaded by Russians and Armenians.

'' Armenians in the city of Van started rioting and started to attack Muslim villages and the castle. The Turkish headquarters in the castle had lost 300 soldiers and as a result of the street combats for days, the rebels took over the city. Russia occupied the city on 17th May, 1915. Armenians sided with Russia afterwards and started to massacre Muslims. Approximately 80.000 Muslims around Bitlis started to flee. '' [Wangenheim,Deutschisches und Armenien 1914-1918,Postdam 1919 p.65]

The ethnical cleansing by Armenians of Muslims was officially documented in 1915 report of General Bolhovitinov in the period of the Czardom Russia

" Politics followed by Dashnaks is;
occupying neighbor nations lands with
the help of west and cleansing these
lands from Turks and Kurds to create
a aerial pure Armenian nation "
Bagrat Artemovitch Boryan
Armenia - International Diplomacy and the Soviet Union
State Publishing House
Moskva - Leningrad 1928

However why would Armenians bother to kill Turks and Kurds when with the support and promise of the Entente States they would seperate 6 cities in East and Southeast Anatolia (Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Van, Elazığ, Bitlis, Sivas) from the Ottoman Empire? We find the answer to this romantic question in population statistics. At the beginning of 19th century the population of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was almost 1/3 less than the total population of Turks and Kurds according to the British historian H.F.B. Lynch and the French historian Cuinet. Unfortunately it was not possible to found the Great Armenian State that they long hoped for with this population structure.

The destruction that the Muslim population in East Anatolia escaped in 1915 is better understood when the Azeri population in Transcaucasia today is investigated (following the Türkmençay Treaty in 1828). According to the population statistics provided by Lynch, half of the Armenia population at the beginning of 20th century was formed by Azeris and the aftermath of them is an unknown today.

Right here we understand what the statement of ‘Deceived Kurds’ politically mean and the tragic situation of the European Enlightenment that I mentioned at the beginning of may article come out.

Dirty Propaganda about Kurds

Not any of the missionaries in East and Southeast Anatolia, first and foremost the ones in Van cared to mention about the massacres carried out on Turks and Kurds. Even if there was anyone who had mentioned about these, that was never allowed to surface. Ofcoure we need to assess the European and American Christian Missionaries according to the ‘most sacred’ existence philosophy that they believed in and not according to the European Enlightenment Philosophy.
I leave it to their conscience if there is any, which legitimizes ‘Christian Fanaticism’ for imperialist agenda, to assess this ( I think I am a daydreamer because I am actually expecting an onthological payoff).